A meeting in a Whataburger parking lot in Laredo helped expose how a new cartel boss climbed to power, a 2022 investigation found.
The man in the booth thought he was talking to an ally. He was really talking to a source working with the DEA, the U.S. drug agency.
The report, published by the news outlet Infobae, traces the rise of Juan Cisneros Trevino, known as "El Juanito." He became a top leader inside the Cartel del Noreste, a violent group that split off from Los Zetas. The cartel runs drugs and carries out kidnappings around Nuevo Laredo, just across the border from Laredo, Texas. Its reach and its family ties to some of Mexico's most wanted men make this story matter on both sides of the river.
The Whataburger meeting happened in September 2021, in a parking lot on Calton Road in Laredo. A man named Noe Gonzalez Martinez, known by the nickname "Tocayo," sat down to talk business. He needed guns. He needed three hitmen. His job, he said, was to kidnap and kill a local drug dealer known as "Tico."
Gonzalez did not know his contact was working with the DEA. Every word he said got passed along to federal agents. Investigators later said the order for the killing came from higher up the chain. It came from Juan Cisneros Trevino himself.
Cisneros Trevino is not just any cartel member. He is the nephew of Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, known as "Z-40," and Oscar Omar Trevino Morales, known as "Z-42." Both men once ran Los Zetas, one of the most violent cartels Mexico has ever produced. Cisneros Trevino's mother, Ana Isabel Trevino Morales, is their sister.
His half brother and half sisters, Sofia Del Carmen ("la Mojon"), Orlando ("el Rolis"), and Carlos Alberto ("la Bola") Monsivais Trevino, all sit in prison today. Cisneros Trevino avoided that fate. Instead, he climbed the ranks and took charge of "La Tropa del Infierno," or "The Hell's Troop," the cartel's armed wing and the fighters who carry out its violence.
His path opened up after his cousin, Juan Gerardo Trevino Chavez, known as "El Huevo," got captured and extradited to the United States to face charges. Investigators heard rumors that Cisneros Trevino himself tipped off authorities about his own cousin. The two men had been fighting for control of the organization for some time. After El Huevo went down, "La Tropa del Infierno" launched a wave of attacks in Nuevo Laredo. Fighters hit 20 military bases. They struck six housing complexes where soldiers' families lived. They hit eight more civilian buildings on top of that.
The Cartel del Noreste split off from Los Zetas years earlier, after Mexican forces captured Z-40 and Z-42. Another nephew, Juan Francisco Trevino Chavez, known as "El Kiko," took the reins at that point and gave the group its new name. Infighting like this is common inside Mexican cartels. Splinter factions often fight each other as hard as they fight outside rivals like the Gulf Cartel. Whataburger, the Texas fast food chain, played no role in any of this beyond being a normal, public spot to sit down and talk. Along the border, cartel figures and informants often meet in ordinary places, parking lots, drive throughs, and diners, where nobody looks twice at two men eating and talking.
Court records reviewed for the original investigation did not say what became of Gonzalez Martinez, the man who sat down with the informant at that Whataburger. The Cartel del Noreste kept operating in and around Nuevo Laredo in the years after the report came out. Mexican and U.S. authorities have kept targeting its leaders since then, but the group has proven hard to shut down for good. Every time one boss falls, a new one, often a relative, steps in to take his place.
